BusinessTN

Like so many others, Roane County has struggled to bounce back from sudden mass unemployment as manufacturers have gone belly up or sold out to overseas competitors. Not even Roane, the heart of the so-called Innovation Valley and home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (with the much-touted Spallation Neutron Source and nearly half of the City of Oak Ridge), is immune to the challenges of economic development.

A good year was a year with no major closings to report, says Leslie Henderson, who came on board in 2003 as the new president and CEO of The Roane Alliance, the county’s collective chamber of commerce, tourism and industrial development agency.

With 6% of its 52,889 residents jobless, the county was concerned but not desperate. The communities wanted relief, though many were reticent about beating the drums too loudly.

“It’s almost like they wanted to keep [the area] a secret, like fishermen are with their little fishing hole. They didn’t want anyone messing it up,” Henderson says.

That “fishing hole” is hardly little. The county, named for Tennessee’s second governor, Archibald Roane, boasts the 29,000-acre Watts Bar Lake and steep mountainsides of the Appalachians’ tail end just east of the Cumberland Plateau. Some say its beauty rivals the Great Smoky Mountains.

In reality, the rocky terrain was holding Roane back. For enterprises on the hunt to relocate a headquarters or massive facility, the challenge was two-fold—find a large, flat expanse on which to build that is, in turn, surrounded by land that allows easy access.

The county provided a solution when it selected and cleared a 655-acre flatland on its eastern edge (closest to Knox County and Oak Ridge) that became Roane Regional Business and Technology Park. That move served as a much-needed economic catalyst in early 2005 when Knoxville-based wholesale grocery distributor giant, The H.T. Hackney Co., chose to relocate from its worn-out downtown warehouse to Roane’s sixth and newest park.

The move was a huge coup for Roane since the 115-year-old corporate icon had plenty of nearby Knox County acreage options. With its massive 300,000-square-foot facility in clear view of Interstate 40, Hackney has become an ultimate billboard to advertise not only itself, but also the county’s industrial development potential.

Roane Regional offers Hackney virtually unlimited space, and Henderson says the company plans to exercise its expansion options soon. Another major incentive: The Tennessee Department of Transportation is carving out an interchange off I-40, providing Hackney’s trucks the best possible access. Other smaller tenants, Protean Instruments, Pegasus Technologies and Dienamic Tooling Systems, will also benefit. Once completed, Roane will count nine exits, the most of any East Tennessee county.

The anticipated windfall of new business coming to the state-of-the-art business park hasn’t materialized as quickly as Roane County officials might have hoped, but after Hackney’s leap of faith, prospects have become hotter. A few have signed on to further build out the park, which lies closest to the City of Kingston. Parcels go from $25,000 to $40,000 per acre depending on I-40 visibility.

“Seven out of 10 [prospects] will want an existing building these days,” says Michael Harvey, executive vice president of the East Tennessee Economic Development Agency, the group who pushes the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley brand. “If things are developing a little slowly down there, it’s because they haven’t had any existing buildings on the market.”

With a spec building the next logical step, Knoxville-based Joseph Construction recently completed a 46,000-square-foot shell, expandable to 100,000, with a $2 million price tag. Joseph’s president Gerry Eastman has committed to build two more at Roane Regional.

Roane’s fishing hole isn’t so secret anymore, thanks to high-profile residential and commercial developments like Greg Norman’s Tennessee National golf community underway in neighboring Loudon County. Henderson says developers view Watts Bar as next in line for waterfront retirement living.

Mike Ross of Rarity Communities staked his Roane County claim in 2005 with Rarity Ridge, a 1,400-acre community with room for 2,800 residential units ranging from condos to $500,000 homes. Other developments include 800-acre Ladd Landing, Emerald Point with 58 parcels, the Grande Vista Bay gated community and a yet-to-be-named $500 million golf course development with 1,700 homes priced up to $1 million each.

“I think they’re right on the cusp of big things. They’ve put all the pieces in place now. I’m not concerned about Roane County doing well,” Harvey says.

Let’s hope the projected influx does not scare away the fish.